1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autonomous travel vehicle that autonomously travels while reproducing a specified travel route.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are known travel vehicles and robots that autonomously travel while reproducing a travel route taught by an operator. For instance, JP-A-8-326025 discloses a cleaning robot, which includes a casing equipped with travel drive means for traveling on a floor surface, position detection means for detecting a position of the casing on the floor surface, cleaning means for cleaning the floor surface, operation receiving means for receiving operation input interfaces for the travel drive means and the cleaning means, storage means for storing a travel route based on positions detected by the position detection means in association with received content of the operation receiving means, and control means for reading stored content stored in the storage means so as to control the travel drive means and the cleaning means based on the stored content.
The travel vehicle or the robot described above reads position information stored in travel route data indicating a taught travel route every predetermined control period and autonomously travels based on the read position information, so as to perform reproduction travel along the taught travel route. When this travel vehicle or robot performs the reproduction travel along a travel route, it may change a travel condition such as an unexpected stop or deceleration due to an existence of an obstacle on the travel route (which did not exist when the travel route was taught, in particular).
The conventional travel vehicle or robot continues to read the travel route data even during the stop or the traveling at a decreased speed, and therefore an actual position of the travel vehicle or the robot may be deviated from the position information of the read travel route data after the travel condition is changed. In this case, the taught travel route cannot be reliably reproduced for traveling.
In addition, it is difficult for the conventional travel vehicle or robot to reliably reproduce a work having a concept of time, e.g., “to stop for a constant period of time” or “to do different works for different sections”.